* Posts by Bad Fish

24 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Apr 2008

German sauna drags punters to court over naked truth

Bad Fish

Looks quite nice...

...but as well as the pretty pictures, the website has an 11-page pdf (in small print) listing all the things you're not allowed to do, with the penalties for each.

US police to throw big balls in criminals' faces

Bad Fish

VinceH

Surely the idea goes back to the Zeroids in Terrahawks back in the 1980s, as seen here for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dneGtDWZM6U

Microsoft eggheads publish JavaScript crypto code for devs

Bad Fish
FAIL

Re: charming.

And when you go to the NSA-backdoored web page that uses it, it will download some slightly different javascript from somewhere else, and verify it against a different check sum in a different location. And you won't know the difference.

Internet of Things fridges? Pfft. So how does my milk carton know when it's empty?

Bad Fish
FAIL

Java smart appliance

If I remember correctly, the first proposed use of Java was supposed to be smart washing machines that would email the service centre when they needed repair. Nobody ever explained how the email would get sent when the machine was broken.

SLOW DOWN: Insecure-by-design software on road

Bad Fish
FAIL

The signs on the A1M regularly tell you to slow down because of accidents or traffic jams that turn out to be non-existent; I suppose the operators put up a message when something happens, but don't remove it when the problem has cleared. The effect is, of course, that no-one takes the slightest notice of the signs; if there were a real problem, the signs would not help: except that motorists could then be blamed for "not taking notice of the warning signs".

Why can’t I walk past Maplin without buying stuff I don’t need?

Bad Fish
Happy

Cheaper is worse ...

My problem is that I've discovered that anything I want from Maplin (LEDs, transistors, resistors, bits of wire,...) can be bought from China on Ebay for half the price per unit. Provided, of course, that I buy a bag of 100 instead of just the one that I need... I just keep telling myself that of course I will get round to using the other 99 some other time.

Robots? What a bunch of workers...

Bad Fish
Mushroom

Re: GPO snoops

> Hmm, I wonder if there's any way for someone to circumvent this devious terrorism prevention measure...

Judging from the fact that there are people on ebay who are willing to send you bottles of hydrofluoric acid in the post, I would say yes.

Twitter row goes to court, beak says man must cough £17,500

Bad Fish
WTF?

Re: Toby Pedley''s Twitter

A tipping service? Would that be fly tipping or cow tipping?

Now I'm really confused. What has cow tipping got to do with muse racing?

US ponders fibre link to Guantanamo

Bad Fish
WTF?

Saving electricity bills

If they *really* wanted to save on the electricity bills, couldn't they just release the prisoners and close the base?

O2, Be Broadband axe Pirate Bay access

Bad Fish
WTF?

I can't get it to not work

I'm a Be customer, and I can't get the block to work. I can browse the Pirate Bay without any trouble.

What am I doing wrong? I was looking forward to seeing this "blocked" message, so that I could have the pleasure of working round it in less than 30 seconds. But now I'm annoyed that it's not blocked. Can anyone help me to get it properly blocked, please?

How to... change sleep-screen pics on your Kindle

Bad Fish
WTF?

What's the point of this sleep screen?

Isn't a screensaver or "sleep screen" supposed to stop burn-in? If the kindle screen suffers from burn-in, displaying the same image every time you put it to sleep is the worst thing it could possibly do. And if it doesn't suffer from burn-in, what's the point of having any sort of screen saver?

DfT to install new motorway tech

Bad Fish

Variable speed limits

@max allan:

They surely work by letting the traffic use all the lanes: if the limit is faster than the lorries in the inside lane, nobody else wants to use that lane. So you effectively gain an extra 33% or 50% road, which compensates for the extra traffic.

In other countries they ban lorries at peak times, which has the same effect *and* allows the increased capacity that extra speed gives.

Zeus botnet raid on UK bank accounts under the spotlight

Bad Fish
FAIL

Perhaps it was Barclays

Their approach to security is excellent: they once sent me an email that invited me to "click here to log into your account". I was about to delete it as spam when I realised that it was genuine: it had my name and account number in it.

When I complained, they just sent me back a form email saying "if you have a problem with your account, phone this 0870 number".

IWF: Good on child abuse...

Bad Fish
Thumb Down

Complete waste of money

So their idea of success is:

The level of crime unchanged after 3 years.

Crime driven into the hands of "big suppliers" (presumably the Russian Mafia; presumably untouchable )

Only 0.2% of web sites dealt with.

No mention of any prosecution of anybody for anything, let alone child abuse.

And in return, we all get our internet access filtered by an unaccountable body with close links to the government.

Thousands wrongly labelled by CRB checks

Bad Fish
FAIL

It's even more insane

@Iglethal: it's even more insane than you think: my daughter just had to fill in the form for a check for a job working with children, and they said to her "when the result arrives at your house, bring it round here for us to see".

She came back home and said to me "why don't I just write my own fake report and print it off myself?".

How I rebuilt Europe after the Berlin Wall collapsed

Bad Fish
Coat

The Labour Theory of Value

So the Labour Theory of Value is discredited in the eastern block? It's still alive and kicking in the west, where it governs the price of MP3 files...

Barclaycard drops offline

Bad Fish
FAIL

Their customers are lucky it is down

A few weeks ago they sent me an email inviting me to click on the link in the email to access my account. The link wasn't to www.barclaycard.co.uk. I was about to delete it when I noticed it included my real name: it turned out it was genuine! I can only conclude that they *want* to teach their customers to fall for phishing attempts.

If their web site goes down and stays down, perhaps their customers will learn sense instead.

IWF chief: We don't need crusaders

Bad Fish
Big Brother

They don't care about getting rid of child porn

According to research done by the University of Cambridge, banks can get phishing sites in foreign countries shut down in an average of 3.5 hours, but the IWF takes no action to get foreign kiddie porn websites shut down, and on average they last 30 days.

Why? Perhaps because the IWF doesn't want to get rid of this stuff. They are in the business of censorship, not the business of protecting children from abuse. They must be secretly worried that their blocklist is getting smaller: if it gets to zero, there's no reason for them to keep their jobs.

From tracking sex performance to tracking sex offenders...

Bad Fish
Paris Hilton

How many sex offenders are there?

If that's only 23% of the sex offenders in that neighbourhood, I'm glad I don't live near there.

Or - perhaps all those offenders are teenagers who have been prosecuted for sending each other racy pictures taken with their iphones. In which case, we're all safe no matter how many of them there are.

Paris, because she knows about racy pictures.

Average UK broadband just over half advertised speed

Bad Fish

Not the ISPs fault?

@Soruk: if you think the slow connection is due to line length, try changing your ISP to BE. I did, and now I get 12 meg over the exact same piece of wire that could only manage about 4 meg with my previous ISP.

When BT isn't involved, things just mysteriously seem to improve...

Botched judge threat probe downs Fathers 4 Justice website

Bad Fish

Who's Who

If you want the address of a judge, just look in Who's Who. Your local library will have a copy.

Unless, of course, the library service has been shut down by the government on the grounds that it is posting secret information.

Too-tall terror snapper stopped by cops again

Bad Fish

Secret laws

So the police can stop and search people only if there is an s44 authorisation, but they keep secret the places where such an authorisation is in force.

How is this different from "the police can stop and search anyone, anywhere?" No-one can safely refuse, because there's always the danger that the police have a secret authorisation.

Secret laws mean that the police are not bound by law.

London Olympics drives dash for terrestrial HDTV

Bad Fish
Unhappy

Re: Load of tish tosh!

Andy shouldn't worry about his new TV. If it receives the current digital standard, it's not going the work with a new HD standard that hasn't been invented yet. TFA says "People are used to buying new boxes now", so this is a great opportunity for Andy to throw away his crap digital TV in a couple of years time, and buy a new one.

Which is the whole point of the exercise, isn't it?

New banking code cracks down on out-of-date software

Bad Fish
Paris Hilton

My bank asks security questions when I phone them

I had to call them to active a new credit card:

Bank: when did you open your account?

Me: I can't remember

Bank: how much was your last credit card bill

Me: I don't know; my wife pays them

Bank (after a pause): your credit card is now activated.

(Paris, because shw gives a warm fuzzy feeling, even though my bank doesn't)